Posted by silentpadna on 5/26/2011 12:01:00 PM (view original):10. Leave ML caliber players in the minors as long as possible - particularly in the season before you plan to go for it - especially if you're within spitting distance of the wild card. And if you can still manage to keep in the bottom half, you'll protect the next 1st round pick.
11. Leave your substitution patterns alone and then blame simmy for those patterns costing you games.
12. Pitch your pitchers just a shade longer than you should.
13. Let your pitchers work out of all of their jams.
14. Attempt to steal early and often...with a slow team.

A variation of #10, which I've seen done by an owner (actually, the commish) in a world that I left (primarily for reasons like this):

10.5. Trade your good minor league prospects when they are ML ready for even better minor league prospects that are still a couple of seasons away, so that you can promote "super-team" to the majors all at once.

Posted by deathinahole on 5/26/2011 11:49:00 AM (view original):I'd put something in there about dumping $36M of payroll to get an extra $18M of prospect budget

I'm beginning to think that this may be the new league killer.

I went back in Happy Jack and pulled out 7 internationals that were $20M+ that were acquired 5 or more seasons ago.

All are in the majors. One...only one...is a bonafide star. Two are long As...they could not even crack a starting rotation.

So think about it; if you are transfering budget to get to $30M prospect (which seems to be the median for the owners that think this is a hot idea), you are losing $20M of payroll to do that. ($20M to get $10M.)

So, you are basically out of the FA running.

Drop $20-$26M on an Int; there goes most of your draft class, and maybe your #1 pick if he ups his demand.

Do that for what, 5 seasons? Maybe 1 is a star. Now what? You probably leave and make the next sap fix it, that's what.